


Closing In

by Chris_Quinton



Category: Highlander: The Series
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-17
Updated: 2020-04-17
Packaged: 2021-03-02 04:54:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23699605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chris_Quinton/pseuds/Chris_Quinton
Summary: Methos visits an old haunt overlooking Lake Geneva, and gets an unwelcome reminder of his past.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	Closing In

_______________________________________________________________________________

  


It was a spur of the moment impulse. The notice nailed to the gate pillar announced in French and German:

Sale of Contents

The Coach House

Saturday April 12th

From 9 to 5

Methos stopped, put his car into reverse and backed up until he could turn into the mansion’s gateway. He'd known this place nearly two hundred years ago, though he was more familiar with the big house that overlooked Lake Geneva: the Villa Diodati. It brought bitter-sweet memories of a time hazed by laudanum and wine, of brilliance that dazzled and the intoxicating power of words strewn like cut gems amid the dross of overindulgence.

For a while Methos avoided the people going in and out of the coach house, mostly dealers, if he was any judge, and wandered around the grounds. The overcast sky promised rain, and no one bothered to challenge his roaming.

The Coach House had been converted to living accommodation some time in the last hundred years, and it had a kind of run-down, seedy look to it. The mansion didn't look much better, and the grounds were in need of a gardener's care. The cottage where the Shelleys and Claire had stayed was gone, a modern villa in its place, but the view out over the lake remained more or less unchanged. He stared at it, seeing the past more clearly than the present until a sudden squall of rain jerked him back to the here-and-now.

Methos retreated to the converted coach house and ducked inside. Where there had once been loose-boxes, standing for a couple of carriages, with grain and hay stores above, along with cramped quarters for the groom-cum-gatekeeper, was now a rather dark and shabby collection of rooms sixty-plus years out of fashion. Dingy net curtains, walls and ceilings stained by decades of cigarette, cigar and pipe smoke didn't help the ambience. Nor did the amount of furniture crowded in them, as well as assorted bric-a-brac with overly optimistic price-tags. Then there were the books.

They were stacked in piles, lined up in shallow cardboard boxes that mostly seemed to have held recently imported French apples, and wedged into overflowing shelves.

The overwhelming clutter seemed far too much for it all to have come from the occupiers of the coach house itself, and it was a fair bet that the current owners of the mansion had taken the chance to get rid of their own junk as well. Methos picked up a book at random: a child's adventure from the 1920's. It was battered, spine broken and marked by inky fingers. He smiled, and carefully replaced it in its box.

The next book to catch Methos' eye was older, and as battle-scarred at the first he'd found. Its title was unreadable on the scuffed spine. He opened it, and discovered a familiar name beneath the title, _My Sojourn with Greatness, an Account of the Life and Tragic Death of Lord Byron of Rochdale_ , that of a valet he'd known in 1816.

The book itself had been written years later, after Byron's supposed death in 1824, but Methos had never heard of this particular biography. After reading a few pages he knew why. Thomas Prenderby's writing style was turgid, virtually impenetrable and seemed to be mostly composed of self-aggrandizement.

His sales would have been minimal. But there were some rather nice illustrations that should have caught the valuers' eyes. Prenderby had fancied himself as a portraitist, Methos recalled, with rather more talent in that than he'd shown in his writing. Most of the sketches were of Byron and the Shelleys, a few of Claire, and one, he saw with an unpleasant shock, was unmistakably himself.

Methos took the book to the nearest window and stared at the page. It was a good likeness. Too good. And underneath it, written in ink faded to sepia, he read, _I'm only forty-three years behind you. The hunt goes on, Brother_. The signature was a flourished 'K'.

His expression showed nothing of the ice that filled his gut. Methos paid the asking price for the book and took it away.

He drove to a secluded stretch of countryside, left the car in the pull-in to a field gate, and walked into the copse. There he did something he never thought he'd do since the inventions of papyrus and ink. He lit a small fire and fed the book to it, page by page, and felt nothing but the queasy chill that all prey knows.

  


  



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